U-CF School Board appoints new members and approves proposed preliminary budget

12/08/2015 10:25AM
● By J. Chambless

By John ChamblessStaff Writer

The Unionville-Chadds Ford School Board
appointed its new members on Dec. 7 and quickly got down to the
business of approving the proposed preliminary budget for the 2016-17
school year.

The board now includes Elise Anderson,
Carolyn Daniels, Victor Dupuis, Jeff Hellrung, Gregg Lindner, John
Murphy, Michael Rock, Robert Sage and Steve Simonson. At the
organization meeting, Dupuis was unanimously re-elected as board
president. The voting for vice-president came down to seven votes for
Hellrung and two votes for Simonson, so Hellrung will be serving as
vice-president under Dupuis.

The brief meeting that followed
included approving the purchase of a replacement truck in the amount
of $40,612.55, and the approval of bids for liquid fuel for the
coming school year.

The main agenda item was approving the
proposed preliminary budget, which at this point totals $83,679,685
in total appropriations. Adoption of the preliminary budget is
expected on Jan. 25, and adoption of the final budget and the levying
of real estate taxes is expected on June 20.

Robert Cochran, the district's director
of business and operations, outlined the budget process for the new
members of the board.

“This budget calls for $855,000 worth
of exceptions,” Cochran explained, with a 5.6 percent increase in
Chester County millage, and a 5.9 percent increase in Delaware
County. The weighted average is a 5.66 millage increase.

“That is over the Act One Index by
$2,120,000 of expenditures that will need to be cut,” Cochran
continued. “It is over the Act One plus exceptions limit by
$1,170,000. So we will be looking at that in the ensuing months
within the administration to bring this budget down to where it needs
to be. We would look to do that by a combination of cuts, and use of
fund balance, which would produce an operating deficit budget, but
not necessarily result in an operating deficit, based on our
operations in the past several years. Or there could be a combination
of both, which is the reality of where we will be. The real hard
budget work takes place not at this preliminary phase, but it in the
March time frame. We will be having discussions of what initiatives,
or what staffing changes, will be made or maintained.

“As for the state budget, they're
still haggling with 2015-16,” Cochran said. “We have not gotten
any funds from the state. Fortunately, that has not adversely
impacted the district at this time. There are school districts that
are struggling because of the lack of state cash flowing to them. The
fact that 85 percent of our budget is funded locally is beneficial to
us. It means that the lion's share is managed by our taxpayers, but
it also means that we are not at the mercy of the state at this
time.”

District superintendent John Sanville
said, “What this budget does is leave all doors open to us, except
referendum. We're taking referendum off the table. Everything else is
still open for the board and administration as we move forward.
There's going to be some hard work to do with this budget, there's no
doubt. It's early -- we don't even know how much money the state's
going to give us this year, let alone next year. We can actually use
$1.2 million in reserves to balance the budget, so that does not take
referendum into account.”

Dupuis commented that, “I'm appalled
that our state representatives can't pass a budget for last year, and
yet they require us to propose a budget for next year. It's a mystery
to me that that can be required of us in the midst of their lack of
ability to get a budget. I want to call on our community to hold our
elected representatives responsible for appropriate fiscal
management, and that includes getting a budget passed.”